The pandemic laid bare a trend many educators throughout the world had already noticed. The near reverence with which students used to regard serious newspapers had largely evaporated and, in some cases, been replaced with outright contempt. I taught scholarly research and writing at the start of our new millennium and, like most of my colleagues, I encouraged skepticism toward the media. We taught our students that even the most prestigious newspapers shouldn’t be taken for gospel and that all articles were susceptible to error and bias. Today, this kind of instruction is neither necessary nor helpful. For the most part, students are already skeptical of the media and, where they detect opinions in news sources different from their own, they are increasingly likely to dismiss everything in those sources as fundamentally unreliable. In this session, we will consider the main reasons students have lost faith in the media and explore non-naïve and responsible ways of building it back.

From reverence to contempt: students’ evolving attitudes toward the media and the urgent need for instructional recalibration

Ill-advised sharing on social media often harms more than just the sharer. In obliterating the distinction between private and public experience, social media has not only removed barriers that once protected individuals from the consequences of expressing themselves in self-destructive ways, it has also removed barriers that used to protect society from the spread of destructive ideas. But social media also allows for the rapid and extensive dissemination of good and sometimes life-saving information, while providing a platform for individuals to influence family and friends by modeling responsible behavior. 

Here, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ll analyze social media’s always complex and ever-evolving cost-benefit calculus.

Adam Blackwell

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